RFK Jr. could have enormous power over public health: “He wants a bigger role”
In March 2022, when President Joe Biden Needing a COVID-19 response coordinator to help direct the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history, he turned to a blue chip public health expert: Dr. Ashish Jha. Jha has spent many years reaching the pinnacle of evidence-based medicine. He attended Harvard Medical School, worked as a practicing physician, and served as faculty director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. Currently, he is dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University.
That’s the type of resume that traditionally leads to an appointment to an important federal position. Now, however, a different kind of credentialism is being applied as the incoming Trump administration develops transition plans for governing American medicine and public health. The new must-haves are: disdain for the medical establishment, skepticism about vaccines, personal branding skills and, above all, loyalty to the MAGA cause and those who follow its standards. its standard.
It is likely, for example, that the five sources involved in discussions of conversion, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spent decades making unproven claims about the harmful effects of vaccines, will dominate America’s health agencies.
Report that Donald Trump is toying with the appointment of RFK Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services caused widespread consternation, sources said VF His role could be much larger and more far-reaching. “Those who say he will be HHS secretary are crazy,” said one health care expert familiar with the transition plan. “Confirmation wars suck. It will create a lot of trouble for the Republican party. He wants more than just HHS, and it wouldn’t make sense for him to want a role larger than a department.”
Source said VF that RFK Jr. would likely be assigned the role of White House chief medical officer, with oversight not only of HHS and its affiliated agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Health. Disease Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. , but also by the US Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Sid Miller, The current Texas agriculture commissioner, who is helping the Trump team screen USDA candidates, and is mentioned in his capacity as USDA secretary, described his interview approach to Vanity fair. “First thing, I ask them: ‘Do you support Donald Trump 110%? The second question was: ‘Do you think you could work with Bobby Kennedy and his Make America Healthy Again plan?’”
IN RFK Jr.’s narration. He will fight chronic disease in America by breaking the grip of the processed food lobby, exposing flaws in vaccine science, and moving aggressively to “ eradication of corruption” in U.S. health care agencies, which could involve eliminating entire departments.
Below one MAHA Under the banner of radical reform, he said, he would empower Americans to make decisions about their own health, among them whether to vaccinate their children. For years, Kennedy’s organization, Children’s Health Defense, has made false claims that certain ingredients in vaccines can cause autism and other harmful effects. He has vehemently opposed legal protections for vaccine manufacturers, considered essential to continued production and development of new vaccines. He linked the rise in school shootings to increased use of antidepressants and claimed that COVID-19 may be designed to minimize harm to Chinese populations and Ashkenazi Jews .
Dr. Gregory Poland, the magazine’s commercial editor Vaccine and president of the Atria Academy of Science and Medicine, said that Kennedy’s “untrue” statements and approach of firing all experts would jeopardize “the health, welfare of the entire people”.
Faced with what could be a radical transformation or even dismantling of the federal public health apparatus, some observers are cautiously optimistic that cooler heads will prevail. position. “Campaign rhetoric is different from governing,” said Richard Besser, CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who served as acting director of the CDC in its early days Barack Obamapresidential position. “I’m on the side of wanting to see what the government does, now they will be responsible.” He added, “I would be very surprised if the federal government took a position that would lead to the increasing spread of infectious diseases in our country.”
